London's Infectious Media unlocks its own real-time bidding (RTB) data in a report titled "European RTB Insight Report." Infectious' Martin Kelly tells AdExchanger.com about the need for the report, "There's still a dearth of information out there on the market and loads of interesting stuff happening that isn't being looked at from a macro perspective which is what we're trying to do." Insights include: "Fluctuations in CPC and CPM cannot be attributed to supply and demand alone." Nice graphs, fresh data. Why wouldn't you? (PDF).

Controlling Digital Ads

24/7 Real Media's Larry Allen (previously of Yieldex and Kikin) discusses digital ads in a think piece on The Business Insider and says there three key players including Buyers, Vendors and, "Publishers, who it could be argued, have their heads in the sand blindly providing inventory to open exchanges in hopes of increasing the value of their inventory." Read about who he thinks is in control.

Training The Sale

If your product is complex... a hard-sell - how about adding a little "training"? The Wall Street Journal's Emily Steel and Jessica Vascellaro tag team about Apple and challenges with its super-premium iAd unit (SPIAD). They note, "In an effort to woo more advertisers, Apple is establishing a training program, arranged in conjunction with its media buying agency OMD, part of Omnicom Group Inc., to teach the firm and its clients about the mobile marketing landscape." Maybe that'll work. Maybe not.

Demand-side platform and search retargeting company Simpl.fi says that it has launched an API which "enables clients and partners to seamlessly integrate Simpli.fi's display advertising capabilities with their own systems, automating the processes of campaign set-up, management, and reporting." Interoperability remains a theme for many online ad tech solutions. Read the release.

IPO Door Jamb

"Experts predict this week could be the busiest for initial public stock offerings since 2007, and Palo Alto's Jive Software got things off to a solid start Tuesday." And so begins an article on IPO biz this week from San Jose Mercury News which covers social networking software company Jive. Maybe the door is not slammed shut to internet businesses? Groupon is up nearly over 30% since the end of November. Turning point? Squeaky hinge gets the oil.

More Mobile Funding

"Mobile-local advertising network" xAd has received $9 million ($13 mil total since 2009) in funding from a range of investors including Softbank Capital. Unlike some recent investments in ad tech companies, the new funds will not be used for sales and marketing according to a release. xAd claims it will concentrate on building out the product: "The additional capital will be used to enhance xAd’s existing tools for both publishers and advertisers, as well as further build its patent-pending, ad-serving mobile technology that effectively factors in user-, contextual- and location-based relevance for optimal mobile performance." Patent more.

Infographic Wednesday

The data hounds over at Clearspring have unleashed another infographic leveraging insights from the sharing data bank. See it on Ad Age.